


Nuances of Language

by wormsForthought



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, Complicated Relationships, Multi, References to Academy Era, Telepathy, but they love each other - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-05
Updated: 2021-02-05
Packaged: 2021-03-16 20:13:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,610
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29213226
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wormsForthought/pseuds/wormsForthought
Summary: Three different communication breakdowns. Three different doctors and masters. Sometimes human languages aren’t enough.
Relationships: The Doctor/The Master (Doctor Who)
Kudos: 14





	Nuances of Language

The Doctor sat in the wheelchair, old and decaying, the fire in his eyes dimmed mostly for show. Not show for the Master, exactly, because he knows that were his old friend to look at him—really look at him, he’d see exactly what he was thinking.

The Doctor was projecting—a thought and a memory, a series of words and colors, just in the case the Master lowered his mental shields enough to let him in. 

There weren’t words that could explain their relationship, because even in that moment, with Earth subjugated and the TARDIS cannibalized and people who were supposed to be his friends tortured, the Doctor still cared for the Master more than all of that combined. 

He could think of the world in Gallifreyan. A word than meant friendship beyond time, partnership beyond physical, trust and distrust, love and pain and promise that neither would be willing to break. It was a single word in his mother tongue, but even with so many words in English the Doctor wasn’t able to replicate the sense of responsibility that the single word in Gallifreyan ignited in his chest and curled around his hearts, binding them together and squeezing.

“Stop it.” The Master’s voice comes from somewhere to the left, but the Doctor didn’t so much as blink to indicate that he heard him.

By then the Doctor was lost in his memories, having allowed himself a moment of reprieve from reality in the past. He’s back at the academy, sitting on his old bed, the room a perfect replica of the one they’d shared when they really had been that young. In the memory, the Doctor was running his hand over the spines of Galifreyan books, purposely placed in the large bookshelf that took up a whole wall in their room (behind the bookshelf was another room entirely, hiding behind a complicated mechanism they’d designed one night over a shared bottle of smuggled ginger hyper vodka, but the Doctor didn’t feel like revisiting that memory just yet). 

“Always so sentimental.” The sneer looked natural on the Master’s face, twisting the shapes of his past younger self in ways it hadn’t been able to back then. But cruelty did always look good on him, no matter the regeneration.

“Selfish.” The Doctor responded before walking over to the Master. Outside of his mind, in the real world, he could feel the Master’s fingertips at his temples and his weight in his lap, and the Doctor allowed himself the small victory of having rattled his friend.

“Cowardly.” The Master snapped, not walking away from or towards the Doctor as they circled each other in the small room.

“Merciful.” Before the Master could retaliate with his own hit, the Doctor closed in on him and whispered that single word in his ear. That word that meant everything they were and would always be. 

He flinched- not away from the Doctor, exactly, but a full-body shiver did run through him, shoulders tensing before they relaxed completely and the Master let his head fall on the Doctor’s shoulder. In these bodies they fit well together like this, the Doctor being just taller enough make the position comfortable.

Running his fingers gently through his friend’s hair- from before they were the Doctor and the Master with the weight of the universe on their shoulders, he felt the Master’s hands circle around him, lifting him higher just as much as the Doctor grounded the Master.

For a long moment, they simply breathed. 

~ ~ ~ 

“Human languages have never been quite able to capture the nuances of existence, have they?” She ruffled her skirts then, shuffling her feet in boredom, swinging them under the chair like a child would on a swing. 

“They are adequate.” He said sharply, still a little peeved about what had happened just a few moments ago. His hands fiddled with the door—curiously lacking a handle and a lock—as close to absently as his mind was capable of.

“Are they?” She said, disbelief coloring her voice and pitching her tone. “Even the later ones, those that have mostly figured out gender and species, none of them have ever come close to understanding time. They speak in crude metaphors and stories of old gods in a hopeless attempt to try explain experiences they could never hope to understand.” She folded her hands in her lap then, examining her fingers and palms closely, as if she could find some answers between the folds of skin. 

His hands paused on the doorframe, licking a small section to find out if—no. Another dead end. He then inclined his head a little sideway, conceding her point. “Is that a fault of the language, or of the understanding of the species which speak it?” 

She hummed, gracefully hopping out of the chair and twirling a little before invading his personal space near the door. Then, in a voice almost too soft to be anything but intimate, she whispered something melodic, circular and soft, natural on her tongue. 

His sharp features softened a little, even if he frowned harder to hide his fondness out of principle. His hand, more wrinkly and calloused than hers, came to brush her cheek, looking not at her face but at what was underneath. Her momentarily contained chaos—time swirling behind her eyes, less cruel than her last self had been and more aware, significantly less concerned about other people. While her last self had been fond of roundabout ways of getting to him, grand entrances and burning hatred, she preferred to strike directly at the hearts, tugging his strings with dramatic exits and well-timed companionship.

He didn’t respond to her verbally—he didn’t have to. With the hand at her cheek he gently brushed her temple, asking for permission. 

She granted him entrance- of course she did. She reached for his other hand which had found its way onto her chest, feeling the double heartbeat like an anchor. She guided his hand from her chest to her temple before bringing both of her hands to his. It was an intimate position, but the magnitude of intimacy they shared in that moment would be lost on anyone else (there was no one left to understand the gesture). 

They breathed evenly, melting into each other, filling spaces of memory and mind like a flood— strangling and drowning out thoughts of anyone and anything else, sinking claws into shared memories. They gravitated closer to each other, pulling one another the rest of the short distance so their noses were pressed together. Memories of past lives lived, families loved, carnage wracked, worlds burned and people saved—of clever games and painful games, and desperate longing for friendship.

He pulled away first (he always did).

Turning away from her sharply but not meanly, his hands skimmed over the doorframe with purpose, causing the brick to fold to the sides.

If she was disappointed by his reaction, she didn’t show it. Rather, she clapped her hands in excitement. “Lovely! Time to go kill the princess.”

“ _ Save _ .” He ground out. “Time to go  _ save _ the princess. And she’s not a princess! She’s the political-”

“Po-tay-toe, po-tah-toh.” She sing-songed and pushed her way past him, making a right at the forked corridor.

~ ~ ~ 

The Doctor wasn’t sure how long she’d been in the cell. Technically, she instinctively knew down to the nanosecond how much time had passed, but she chose not to acknowledge that. 

It was easier if she pretended she didn’t know. 

Back against the wall, the Doctor slid to the ground, hands on her knees. 

There had to be a way out, but she couldn’t- she couldn’t think, and-

The Doctor’s head fell back against the wall, tears drying on her cheeks.

What if-

_ Melancholy has never looked good on you. Not when I’m not the cause of it . _

A familiar voice whispered against the side of her consciousness, so soft she swore she imagined it at first, but no. He pressed insistently, and maybe if she wasn’t so tired and defeated she would have tried harder to keep him out, but as it happened he just slipped right into her mind like he belonged there.

Maybe he did. He used to anyway.

“Aww, sweetheart, I’m flattered.”

He didn’t present her with a Galifreyan landscape, thankfully. Instead, they were standing in a field of yellow and purple flowers, and while it was obviously night, the field was brightly lit up by two large moons in the sky. Looking at the constellations above, the Doctor frowned.

“Where are we?” 

The Master’s face was fixed on hers. He was wearing a purple suit with yellow accents that matched the field, because of course he was. If she had the energy, she would roll her eyes.

“You need a haircut.” 

“I need a shower. You didn’t answer my question.”

“Hmm. Come here.” 

Perhaps she should be embarrassed by how easily she fell into his arms, but the contact was so good and felt so real.

“Oh you’ve made a right mess of everything again.” 

“Shut up. How?”

They were swaying gently now, not exactly dancing but close to it. 

“The psychic dampeners are strong around... wherever you are. I had to use a TARDIS to project my-” he stopped, probably because he realized she wasn’t exactly listening to him and the question had been mostly rhetorical anyway. 

It didn’t matter how anyway. 

“I can’t stay long.” His hands were around her waist now and he was leading her through a slow dance she vaguely remembered dancing with him when they were young. 

“Just for now.” She whispered against his shoulder.

“Just for now.” 

**Author's Note:**

> Somehow I deleted this on accident, then found a non-edited version, and re-edited it, not I’m reposting it. I’m kind of proud of this one, I think, and I’m always a slut for these two.


End file.
